live like your love wasn't meant for mine
by sharkinterviewee
Summary: "I don't even know what my name means," Gamora admits. "We didn't have any intergalactic visitors before-" she swallows thickly. "No one to keep an independent record. It all burned with Zen-Whoberi. It won't matter what's written on my soulmate's skin. Could be anything. I'll never know. Whatever their soulmark is- might as well be nothing." [starmora soulmate AU w/happy ending]


"I don't even know what my name means," Gamora admits with a wry chuckle. They're having another late night conversation, keeping watch, one of those talks that she's come to appreciate more and more lately. She's never talked to him about soulmarks before. She never talks to anyone about soulmarks.

It's too… she doesn't have a word for it.

It makes her feel the loss of her people keenly. Quill is probably the first person she's ever told this to.

Peter's expression softens, knowing exactly why that is. Because Thanos wiped out her homeworld, every piece of Zehoberei culture destroyed or erased, trying to wipe her species from history, any remnants that had been preserved off world had been hunted down and eradicated too, to keep it from "polluting" the galaxy. She had told him this much before. Why there was so little left of her people. She was the only thing left of Zehoberei. Because genocide wasn't enough. Thanos wanted them _erased. _

"They don't have any databases?" He asks softly. Because of how soulmarks worked, name meanings were one of the most well documented things for each species in the galaxy, something that was made sure to preserve, considering the significance of it.

Gamora shakes her head. "No. Before, before-" _him, _she thinks, "we didn't have much contact from intergalactic travelers. I don't think we had any. There was no one to keep an independent record, or to input anything into an intergalactic database. It all burned with Zen-Whoberi. It won't matter what is written on my soulmate's skin. Could be anything. I'll never know. Whatever their soulmark is- might as well be nothing."

"I hope you find them," he says, a soft earnestness that makes her throat feel thick.

_Even if they're not me _, he thinks.

* * *

"What does Peter mean?"

"Rock."

Her brows furrow. "Just rock?"

"Boring, right?" He chuckles.

She grabs his shirt sleeve, tugging him into looking back at her, see how serious she is. Her heart is racing. "No, Peter, this is important. Just rock?"

He frowns, face falling in concern at just how- alarmed she looks. "Yeah, just rock. Gamora, what's going on? What's wrong?" He lifts his hand to brush her hair behind her ears, but she pulls back, avoiding his touch, and when she steps away from him, it hurts more than she could ever know.

He tries not to show it, how hard his heart drops into his stomach at Gamora moving away because he tried to reach out to her.

But then she pulls up her sleeve, exposing her forearm and shoving it in front of him. "Does that mean anything to you?" She asks, almost anxiously.

She always thought it was a compound word, though a bizarre one at that. But rock was close enough to stone, right? Maybe this was a specific type of stone on Terra, though she knew that if Peter meant "rock" he wasn't her soulmate. If that was the case, she would only have "rock" or "stone" printed on her forearm. The meaning of her soulmate's first name. But still, she holds her breath as she shows him her soulmark, feeling like this could be… maybe…

Peter peers down at her forearm, running his fingers over the lettering. It's entrancing. He traces them over and over, absolutely drawn to the beautiful lines, curving over her skin. "I… I don't know," he says softly, almost apologetically. "I can't read it."

Gamora lets out a shuddery breath. Of course he couldn't read her native language. No universal translator existed that had programming for Zehoberei language, spoken or written.

"It-" she takes a deep breath in. "It says featherstone. As one word."

She catches the flash of something in his eye. "What? Is that- is it something from Terra? Could it mean Peter? Maybe it's a specific type of- of rock or something. Your first name. Are you sure it's just stone? Not featherstone? You were a young child, maybe, maybe you're not remembering it right." There's a hint of desperation to her voice, and she doesn't know why she's trying so hard to make this fit. To make his name fit her mark. He got it half right, couldn't that be close enough?

She knew it wasn't, but there was something straining in her to make him fit her mark, for it to be Peter. She knows it doesn't work like this, but she's clinging onto a desperate shred of hope that Peter's _hers._ Even though she knows she's just lying to herself.

"No, Peter just means rock, or stone," at his words, she feels like she's gonna cry. "But," he continues, tracing over her lines again, cause that's not how it's supposed to work, he can't believe it, but it's kinda hard to deny. "But that's what- quill. It's a writing instrument. On earth. Made out of a feather." He meets her eyes then, and Gamora doesn't know what to think. That wasn't how soulmarks were supposed to work. It wasn't supposed to include last names. But his name was Peter Quill. And she had featherstone written on her arm.

Suddenly, he pulls away from her, and she swears her skin burns in the absence of his touch. Before she can ask him what he's doing, where he's going when he turns away from her, they need to talk about this, Peter's pulling up his shirt, so she can see what's scrawled across the right side of his ribcage.

"Does that mean anything to you? I've never been able to read it. I have no idea what it says."

When she sees the words he has written on his skin, Gamora lets out a broken sob into her hand. Because Peter has the words _song giver _written on him in her native language. After the first sob, more follow, and she's just clutching herself and sobbing into her hand, shaking, like she's about to fall down. Peter catches her before she can, holds her. He doesn't know if she's crying because it means something or because it means nothing. He's almost too afraid to ask her. He doesn't know if he can.

He helps her sit down on the bench, sits down with her, and Gamora buries her head in his chest and cries, nodding into him.

She can't stop crying. Because she finally knows what her name means. Gamora. It means song giver.

* * *

They're not sure why their marks are so weird. Why they're both written in Gamora's language, rendering them unreadable to anyone but her. Maybe- because they were different species? But, she was fairly certain that, of the stories she's heard before of intergalactic soulmates, your soulmates name was written in _your _language on your skin.

And that doesn't explain why the meaning of Gamora's first name is ostensibly written on his skin as it should be, but why the meaning of his first and last name are written on her arm. Maybe because of his hybrid nature? His celestial parentage? They aren't sure. It doesn't really matter anyway. Because he was hers. There was no changing that. He was hers, and she was his. They found each other. Nothing else mattered.

* * *

**AN: title from featherstone by the paperkites**

**This fic actually didn't start off with the featherstone idea, though. Just the whole soulmate name meaning thing, and Gamora's culture died out, so she has no idea what her name means in the traditional Zehoberei sense until she reads it written in her native language on his skin.**

**I was halfway through writing this fic before I looked up what Peter meant, and I then found out Peter just means rock ¬_¬**


End file.
